Okay, so there’s a pile of important people coming to the NZ screening of the film on Saturday, and another lot attending a simultaneous screening in Birmingham. It’s just the rough cut, but we’re hoping to pick up investment/distribution deals to get us through the vital next stage of post-production. Last week was consumed by making sure the guys in the UK got delivery of the digital file in time for them to burn a bluray to project off. I was relaxed about this end, because we had a week longer, and all we had to do was get a file from the production house down to the cinema. What could possibly go wrong?

1. On my way up to Auckland Wednesday I get a call from the cinema. The high end digital projector has blown a lamp overnight. They’ll get another one. No worries. At least it didn’t happen during our screening!

2. I arrive at the production house to find the file has been output, but they’ve just checked it and it drifts out of sync progressively through the film. Major problem. After much investigation it turns out the RT settings were wrong. They can re-output, but it will take more hours than I have left in the day in Auckland.

3. At some point it strikes me that maybe the file which we rush-couriered to the UK has the same problem. Does it? They have no way of finding out.

4. My file is output and the drive couriered to the cinema. Great!

5. The UK boys get their drive, and their file is okay. Double great!

6. A phone call from the cinema. They can’t find the file on the drive we sent over. The very helpful cinema owner John Davies whisks it back to the production house where it gets reformatted.

7. The file is put onto the drive again, and it’s couriered back to the cinema. Phew!

8. Another call from the cinema. They have the drive; they’ve found the file; they’ve begun to ingest it. Only one small problem – there’s no sound on the file…

9. I’m getting a little frantic. The production house check their file, and it definitely has audio. There’s nothing for it but to do a test run on the projector tonight.

Why worry? After all, there’s a good 39 hours before everyone assembles expecting to watch the film… what could possibly go wrong?

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